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Recent News - Software - Page 11

More than 70,000 apps have now been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Content is currently being added at the rate of 250 items per day. At the time of writing, 70,784 items have been published. Of these, 28,503 were added in the last 90 days and 6,936 were added in the last 30 days. These items come from 17,303 different publishers. Read on for more stats and charts.

We're pleased to announced that the official AAWP (All About Windows Phone) app is now available to download free from the Windows Phone Marketplace and aims to make it easy to access all of our content directly on your Windows Phone device. You can view our latest content, browse or search for content by section, and stream episodes of the podcast.

The product barcode recognition portion of Windows Phone's Bing Vision service is now available in the UK. Bing Vision using the phone's camera to perform visual searches. Previously, in the UK, the service would only recognise Microsoft Tags and QR codes, but it will now recognise barcodes on books, CDs and DVDs. Once an item has been identified Bing Vision provides a link to Ciao, a price comparison website.

At CES Nokia is showing off two new applications, Nokia Transport and Nokia City Lens, which have been developed by its location and commerce division. Both applications show case Nokia's expertise and experience in location and routing related services and information, which is one of the key assets the company brings to its partnership with Microsoft.

The roll out for a minor update for Windows Phone, version 7.10.8107.79, commenced last week. Microsoft has delivered the 8107 update to all manufacturers and operators, but it is optional, which means it may not be made available for all devices. The update fixes a number of bugs including the one that occasionally caused the keyboard to disappear when entering text. In addition Microsoft has made some changes to the way it will be communicating about the delivery of future minor updates.

The Windows Phone Marketplace has now passed the 50,000 app and games submission mark. Content is being added at the rate of 265 items per day. At the time of writing, 50,126 items have been published. Of these, 17,276 were added in the last 90 days and 8,010 were added in the last 30 days. These items come from 13,002 different publishers.

The 50,000 mark, which has been reached sooner than we estimated, is a key milestone, but more important is the accelerating growth of the Marketplace. It took just over a year to get to 40,000 apps, but just 40 days to add the next 10,000 apps. That bodes well for Windows Phone in 2012.

After a happy online jumble of "it's coming, it should be here today, it's here for me, is it in the Marketplace?" from various sites, tweets and Facebook status updates, you can finally pick up the Xbox Companion App for your Windows Phone... and iOS devices. Using your Windows Phone as an alternative controller (think of it like a TV remote rather than gaming controller), the app will allow you to search Bing, browse content from the Marketplace, and control media playback on the Xbox.

Everyone's favourite flight simulator for Windows Phone, Infinite Flight, just got itself a big update, v2.1 (changelog below), adding in two major new planes as well as a number of enhancements and fixes. You can grab the update yourself by going into 'Marketplace' on your Windows Phone and looking for 'Updates' at the bottom of the home screen.

After celebrating its first anniversary by passing the 35,000 app mark in mid October, the Windows Phone Marketplace has now passed the 40,000 app and games submission mark. Content is being added at the rate of 165 items per day. In the last 30 days, 85% of submissions were apps and 15% were games; 68% were free, 23% were paid and 9% were paid with free trial.

Revealed in one of the launch videos for the Nokia Lumia 800 were screens of the generic Nokia Maps for Windows Phone, the software that will be made available to all Windows Phone licensees as part of the agreement between Nokia and Microsoft. We've shown the relevant images below, along with the full video - suffice it to say that Nokia Maps is effectively Bing Maps on steroids, but keeping away from the real time sat-nav features of Nokia Drive.